Hours to a government shutdown, coal-state Senate Democrats blocked swift action on a stopgap spending bill over benefits for retired miners and pressed President-elect Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed coal champion, to intervene with Republicans. The House on Thursday easily approved the must-pass bill that would keep the government operating beyond Friday’s midnight deadline and through April 28. The vote was 326-96. But the bill stalled in the Senate as Democrats facing re-election in 2018, including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, fought for a one-year extension for the miners’ health benefits rather than the temporary, four-month fix in the bill. Trump won those three s ...

Our Opinion…

A deranged man from Salisbury, North Carolina, appeared in Washington, DC. Sunday afternoon with an AR-15 assault style rifle, a pistol and a knife to open fire in Comet Ping Pong, a popular family-style pizza restaurant, because he believed a “fake news” story that the place fronted a pedophile ring run by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Edgar Maddison Welch, 28, drove to Washington on a self ...